MoneyJun 22, 2012 2KHz, London, England

Words by Sean Moeller, Illustration by Johnnie Cluney, Recording engineered by Ian Grimble and Richard Matthews of Communion Music, at 2KHz at Church Studios, Crouch End, London

It was the first day of summer yesterday. Nothing's green anymore. It takes real effort and a substantial wasting of water to keep anything green around here these days. We're shedding clothing, as we ooze right through it and spill out onto the crackling lawns and scalding sidewalks. Air conditioners don't even have a chance to rest their whirring fans, running through the days and the nights to make us feel better.

It's interesting though that when you begin listening to the Manchester, United Kingdom band Money, that all of that heat and all of its side effects go away. They vanish, as if they were never here at all. You begin to walk out the front door of your house and the soles of your shoes begin sliding on the unsteady ground. Just above the tops of your shoes, where the ankles are bare - as they typically are these summer days - a coldness strikes them conclusively. If you stop for a second, you can hear the surface below you bow. You can hear the thick ice cracking as your weight shifts from one foot to the other.

Lead singer Jamie Lee's voice pulses out of the suddenly barren trees, cutting through a frozen enough air - something you hadn't been expecting. You're suddenly walking through a frigid cathedral and you feel surrounded by angels, sinners, owls and yellow blinking eyes, or they could just be waiting spotlights, ready to blind. His voice sounds like a bloody heart, someone who's been ripped apart, forgotten to be loved or neglected in some other way and just left out here in the snowy land to color the whiteness a startlingly contrasting color.

It's battered music, coated with loveliness that's just supposed to make it go down easier. There's shame and gruesome pain poking out from every direction as you walk along that horrifying river where so many spirits have been sunk.